In this segment from the Motley Fool Money radio show, host Chris Hill, Million Dollar Portfolio's Matt Argersinger, Total Income's Ron Gross, and Motley Fool Pro and Options' Jeff Fischer drill down into Oracle's (ORCL +5.82%) numbers and outlook to determine just how overblown Wall Street's reaction was to its fiscal year guidance cut. The tech company is still growing, after all -- just not as fast and with the deceleration most noticeable in a key area for its future: cloud computing.
A full transcript follows the video.
This video was recorded on Sept. 15, 2017.
Chris Hill: On Friday, Oracle shareholders had their worst day in four years. First quarter profits were overshadowed by weak guidance for the rest of the fiscal year. How bad was this, Jeff?
Jeff Fischer: Not as bad as Wall Street would have you think. The revenue guidance for the next quarter is 4.5-6.5% top line growth, and earnings per share guidance of 7-13% growth. I think what Wall Street was most upset about was the guidance for cloud revenue growth, that was about 43%, and that's down from 51% this quarter. So, you're seeing some deceleration in the cloud business growth, which is the key pedestal to Oracle's future. The company is transitioning from a licensed based software business model to a cloud-based, and cloud still only makes up about 16% of its total revenue. So, Wall Street likes to see that transition go quickly, more quickly than it is in the upcoming quarter, and that's why they were a little disappointed. But shares are now at 16.7X estimates for the year. Makes it look very reasonable in this market, and I still like the long-term story at Oracle.
Hill: If cloud for Oracle is only about 16% of their revenue, why do you think we're seeing this reaction in the market? Is it because this has become such a fiercely competitive space with, to name a few, Alphabet and Microsoft competing in this space as well?
Fischer: Yeah, and Salesforce and others. That's partly it, Chris. Oracle has been growing more quickly than the industry and key competitors, so they can say, "Hey, we're taking market share from these people." And that's still true. But if you see a slow down, even a modest one, you might start to question how much more they can grow, and how big they will get in the cloud. That said, Oracle did by NetSuite for more than $9 billion in the past year, and that cloud sort of distorts this guidance as well.
